On any given week, I spend an inordinate amount of time considering new things that find their way into my inbox or my RSS feeds. I do this in order to share with friends, family members, and you, dear readers, what might be good and useful in our world.

This week, for example, I wrestled with whether new apps like Killer Rezzy and Table8, which allow people to pay to reserve prime-time restaurant seats, were solving real problems. I considered whether people needed to learn more about driverless cars, Kickstarter campaigns and the latest in technological "wearables." I wondered about the small daily problems we all face, and whether the latest greatest being trumpeted all over the place might offer any relief.

Then I went out to run a quick errand. In order to get there, I chose to walk down Grant Avenue in Chinatown.

And could not move.

How could I have forgotten what happens in San Francisco during the height of summer? The center of our city is swarmed with tourists, all of whom think it's perfectly reasonable to meander five abreast down the street. They amble along, stopping every two seconds to take pictures, to point at the "local color," to marvel at the many things that lose their charm when you see them on a daily basis. The visitors walk like they're on vacation, because they're on vacation - never mind that the rest of us aren't.

I don't mind the tourists - they contribute to the local economy, remind me that I live in a beautiful place, blah blah blah.

But as I found myself dodging cars and walking in the street (because plodding behind a tour bus' worth of sunburned Europeans would have made me late for my appointment), I thought to myself - wouldn't it be nice if someone had told me to try a different block? Wouldn't it be great if there was an app for that?

I mentioned it to someone, who immediately came up with his own need for a real-time street congestion alert: He drives in San Francisco often, and is constantly running into construction zones.

"Getting home every night is like following a thread through a new maze every time," he told me. "I know they're building lots of new stuff and that's great and all, but I've spent the last six months parked behind orange cones. If only I knew which streets to avoid when I got in the car ..."

I'm not an app developer, but I know a problem in need of a solution when I see one. And since the kids are putting all of their education and imagination toward silly things like MonkeyParking and Table8 anyway - instead of real, desperately needed issues like the need for clean energy - why not tackle some of the small, annoying problems that are actually in need of solutions?

Like:

-- An app to help you find your car.

On the rare occasions when I drive in San Francisco, I don't mind circling the blocks around my destination for 10 minutes until a spot opens up. I don't even mind the honking and swearing from other cars when they get angry at me for waiting for someone else to pull out of a spot so that I can pull in. What I do mind is trying to find my car again hours later, once the sun has gone down and all of the streets look the same.

It happens to all of us, again and again. If you live in the suburbs, it happens every time you park your car in the lot of one of those enormous "destination" malls. If you're under a lot of stress, it can happen near your own home or place of work. Right now, your only option is to use a GPS pin on a map application, something that requires more energy and know-how than all of us have every time we park.

The technology is already there. Someone could make a lot of money from this.

-- Real-time etiquette alerts.

How many times have you wished that someone would ask you how they should behave in public space? Wouldn't it be great if someone asked you whether it was a good idea for them to, say, stand right in front of the BART doors, where they block passengers from exiting, instead of off to the side to let them pass?

Alas, these are the same people who are clutching their smartphones while they're dumb-walking, so they're not going to ask other human beings questions. So we'll have to imagine what it would be like if their phones had alerts that went off every time they did something bewildering or dangerous in a public space.

A ping that went off when they stepped onto an escalator: STAND ON THE RIGHT. PASS ON THE LEFT.

A buzz in their pocket to let them know that they've just smacked someone in the face with their backpack on the bus: TURN AROUND AND APOLOGIZE. TAKE THE BACKPACK OFF AND PUT IT ON THE FLOOR.

A Siri-like voice that shouts when they climb onto bicycles: PUT ME DOWN AND PEDAL ON THE STREET, NOT THE SIDEWALK.

A girl can dream, can't she?

Tell me what app you'd like to have.

I'm not an app developer, but I know a problem in need of a solution when I see one.